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Category Archives: Essays

I have lots of thoughts Dad, but you know, the one that keep coming up is that, it’s kind of your fault.

You and my roommate are very smart people, but you both have a tendency to dismiss people out of hand which is not only snotty and superior, but also a cause of real harm.

When someone says they’re voting for Trump, you say he’s nuts, and turn them away with a brush of the back of your hand. You don’t say, “How come?” Then explain yourself. You assume you’re right, but you only get away with that because you’re educated.

I’m coming to realize I’m alone in always thinking I have something to learn, which means, sometimes, I get to hear someone else’s reasons before I say I’m right. And If I’m sure of something, I have proof and lots of evidence – which you both have. But I share it. I say here’s what I think, and why. Then leave it up to them to decide. I don’t tell them they’re stupid, or what to think. I present what I know and how I feel and leave it at that. If they’re a good enough person, who I can argue a point with, who won’t take it personally, then I’ll argue the point. Try to see it from how they see it.

When my old roommate comes across racism, she doesn’t get upset, she says, “lets talk about it.” Which I love. That’s how you build understanding – through calm smiles.

But I don’t know. Maybe this is naïve. Maybe this only works because I know so few people, so many of whom have so little power. And I like to hear people’s stories. Maybe that’s why I can get away with it. Maybe I’m being self-righteous. Anger and business and busyness are taking the place of community. The eff it, I don’t care, it won’t matter to me, at least I can be contrary if I choose this one – that’s what happens.

We don’t know what democracy means, because everyone smart assumes we learned it the same way they did.

Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I’m an over-explainer. You don’t think you have to explain yourself. You don’t give a why. You know you’re right, and how could no one else understand what you just learned five minutes ago.

I’m starting to think that the swath of insecure, quiet, shy people have nothing wrong with them. Nothing to be fixed. No necessary, mandatory self-confidence lessons. Because they take the time to understand, under the assumption they’re always wrong.

It somehow seems cooler to have gone through tough grit in your past. Why can’t I accept who I was, how I was raised? I used to think I was the most boring thing in the world, because everyone lived that way. Everyone was always going to perpetually fear being stuck in the middle their whole lives, never really excelling.

I want to have bad stuff happen so I can have a past. But that’s a bit rude to the people who actually did. I think about it too much. I think I just want attention. I passively want attention. I also want to be funny without being a smartass. It will never be.

The things I’ve gone through are unique to me. I can only write about me. What I’ve gone through, who I’ve become. My oddities.

I remember our Spanish teacher would ask us questions – we’d go around the room. We’d have to answer in Spanish. He asked, once, is your family normal, most would answer yes, then he’d ask follow-ups and it turns out, no, they’re not normal at all. I think he was trying to get us to think about what normal means. Instead I left feeling like we’re all weird, but I’m the weirdest. He asked me. I said no. We’re not normal. He moved on.

That doesn’t mean the pain I’ve suffered isn’t true, or my experiences any less valuable to myself, just that they’re not cool “going through something” and just like the kids from the slums, I’ve been through crap I thought was normal, that anyone else would have thought was a horror.

I remember the first time I felt like an adult. I was reading Call of the Wild. I didn’t have to look up the big words, I already knew what they meant. I read most of the book standing up near the tall bookshelves in the back, in study hall, in eighth grade. Now that I think of it, that was the last time I took a study hall. I felt like resting would be a discredit to my father who put himself in debt to put me through good, private schools. But, in part because of those schools, I could understand the sentences as a whole, that included words like imperious and intolerable and imperative. That feeling of understanding makes me feel like I belong.

I was so happy I belonged. I started using those words in my speech, my everyday speech. I was told I sounded like I was trying to be smart. Now I’m ashamed; ashamed when I make other people feel inferior. I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to be smarter. Because I don’t think I’m smarter. It had the effect of telling someone they have a strange smile. You won’t ever see their laughter again. Unless they’re stronger than I am. And have that magical ability to not care.

You don’t want me. You want a woman who’ll tell you you’re the greatest. I won’t lie to you. You want a flouncy, thin beauty with a button nose and that kind of history. You can’t handle my mess. And I can tell you what you can handle, because I’m stronger than you are, and you don’t argue with me. Find someone with lovely eye sparkles who knows how to put on subtle. Talk to her about her blushing secrets and tampons. You can’t brush with complexity. And you still suck at grammar.

We treat these people who care like wild flowers we want to press inside novels with hardback covers we’ll pretend to our friends we’ve read. That’s how rare these strange creatures are in our lives of you can’t shock me anymore. We’ve seen it all. You cannot offend us. We have no scruples. Until you hit a nerve, because they’re so well hidden. You show us a gif of a woman’s legs breaking backwards and that’s it. We lose it. But we’re invisible so it doesn’t matter that we don’t care.

Folk music is about people. There’s isn’t a pop fault veneer. It says this is the way it is. This is the way these people lived. And you’ll love them for it. It says I know the person you’re singing about, I’ve met her, she is me. There’s no glancing over pain. The pain is there with the beauty and the winter and the gloom. They’re always simple songs, it’s like I don’t need mixing to show you how I feel. The songs are clear. They open themselves up with a guitar and a story, and say sit down for a minute, and I’ll tell you about me. These are the people who are barely getting by saying, I’m gonna live with music. And I won’t die with nothing. And that’ll be just the way it is. These are the songs you need not to get through the bad times, but to get through the good.

The switch in my brain just swotched and now I know I’m talking too much.

There’s nothing left of me now. All gone and empty. They took it all. I can feel where the thoughts used to be.

Sometimes, hormones mess with my brain. There’s no other way to put it. I can qualify it if you want. I can say: it’s not my fault, it only happens to some women, it shouldn’t impede my cognitive capabilities, you shouldn’t judge me on this one thing, it’s not just me. But. It. Happens.
So I’m listening to the radio, and the woman gives a heads up message that the next song, “Creep” by Radiohead, was banned by the BBC for being too depressing. I, of course, relate to the song. I’m already a bit teary, not, oh look a baby sniffling, but sniffly. I start singing along, “I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.”
The words hit. Boom. Then I’m thinking about the last time I heard the song. I remember I was sitting by myself in my dorm room back at school listening to Radiohead for the first time, looking for something that would mean something to me, feeling all alone, unheard, and understood by no one. So I’m thinking of that, driving down a pretty busy street in rush hour. And I start crying and singing. I’m wiping my eyes, singing along with wobbly gasps, and navigating traffic. We stop at a light and I look to my right. Oh look, it’s a police officer. I’m worrying he’s going to pull me over, and I’ll hit a car while I’m trying to pull over, then I’ll have to get another job to pay for my broken car, and I’ll still be crying. So I’m frantically trying to wipe my eyes and at the same time roll up the windows so he can’t hear my shrieking. But, I went right on past. No problems.
And that made me cry, because I thought maybe he needed to fill his policeman quota, but he didn’t want to pull over a crying girl after a day’s worth of work, so now he’s having a bad day because I’m having a sad day. Then Thom finished his sadness hole, and I drove back home, flicking radio stations every minute so that I didn’t get too attached to a song with too much memory.

You have what you want right now. You’re married. By some miracle you seem to still like your husband – the bigger miracle being he still likes you. You are getting a degree doing what you want to do. You like where you live, you like the groups you have. Be depressed. Because you have everything you want and it’s not enough. Go for it. Embrace the dark, head-in-oven holes of despair. Think of sunshine as absence of the moon. Dream of sleep, and hope that sleeping lasts forever.
But, for the love of God, stop pretending you’re happy. You’re not; I can hear it in your voice. It’s fine. I like you better angry and caustic. You’re more fun to talk to. Let loose that vitriol so confined, that pure disgust of everything, it makes me laugh. It makes me love you for more than just our common mother and father. I won’t call you a type. I won’t compare to you an actress on that show I like that sort of reminds me of you. You are you. I know the you when you’re not covering, furiously sewing that deceptive quilt of “I’m okay.” You have greatness, right there.
God, be depressed, but do it like you used to do everything else. Flare it up. Shout it, scream at it, in its totality. Say, “I’m so depressed I can’t think of a reason to get out of bed today.” Say, “it can’t be that hard to hold my bladder for that long.” Complain with your whole soul. Be sad. Let yourself be sad. Stop trying to make yourself better. There’s nothing wrong with you that’s not wrong with all the women in the family, (you know exactly what I’m talking about, that sharp lack of compassion for failure, accepting that we know we can destroy anyone we know with just a couple sentences) we’re all horrible people. Cuddle with it. Know it.
Stop telling me how good, fine, and well, you are. Tell me instead of how miserable you are. Tell me how the universe will never know you. Tell me how you’re scared to be forgotten after you die. Tell me all the awful things you hate about gossips, then tell me all about the horrible people in your office. Be brave with your hatred. Be brave with your depression. Yell at me so I know you can still feel. Please? It’s so much more fun to have someone to be funny-honest, cutting mean. Frank conversations on death and sugar skulls make me smile. You make me smile better when you let yourself be. Turn off the flashlight, and smile in the soul-eating, teenage lack-of-future, this can never get better, Miyazaki black goop of our minds.

I consider myself a fairly reasonable person. I want to understand both sides; it’s part of how I make sense of the world. If I enter an argument online I do it the same way. I don’t change a fundamental part of my nature because I become anonymous. I am the same.

I often hear, or read, that people online are so awful. I hear that anonymous users online say the worst things. They contribute in the nastiest battles. They terrorize. They group together to yell. They say things they would never say in real life. They’re worse humans. They look at filth; they are filth. But, this, is not so.

People do not suddenly change their compositions, their natures, because they’re in front of a keyboard. The same person who types from behind a wall of identity protection also speaks the same way in a bar. It is not two different people who sit down to type and sit down to eat with their families. Like in all things humans alter their course with circumstance, mood, attitude, and ambiance. But to say you’re not responsible for your actions online, or to say people are worse online, is ridiculous. It dodges the same moral responsibility as saying the drunkard bears no blame for his crimes or the angry for their words.

Those who are rude and belligerent online possess those same attributes offline as well. One might feel freer with one’s speech or actions. For the same reason flings seem easier on vacation. You know these people will disappear, and you don’t have to deal with immediate consequences on your immediate social circle. In the same way a casual comment about the vlog poster’s hideous shirt gets voiced. There can be no personal confrontational repercussions. There are rude people everywhere. The internet just keeps better track of them with the written word. Imagine if every bar fight was transcribed to a chatroom, there might be calls of indecency or rudeness, calls for bannings of bars.

Quit telling me people online are worse because they don’t have accountability, or they think they’re untouchable. If people act socially reprehensible online, it’s because they are acting socially reprehensible. They’re breaking the social guidelines of the website just like they would be breaking cultural norms if they were speaking their minds to their friends. The medium of the internet is their outlet. Those people get banned or called out, and rarely lauded, just like in normal crowd settings. The difference between the internet and face to face interaction is that anyone can see it, so it’s all up for grabs, instead of selective communities only hearing what their friends have to say.

I know this is an immensely complicated issue, because it deals with complex social-cultural interaction. I’m dealing with a small aspect. I’m just tired of hearing, the internet is a horrible place when I’m watching news video footage of bombings from all over the world.